President Donald Trump's first big staffing shakeup after taking a historic loss in the midterms has caused widespread alarm, and, as one prominent former White House leaker warned, has unleashed "a danger to the Western world."
Just a few days after the blue-wave midterms, Trump announced that Susie Wiles was out as his White House Chief of Staff, to be replaced with his longtime ally and deputy, Stephen Miller. Miller is widely credited as the architect of Trump's second-term mass deportation agenda, and has been described as a ruthless xenophobic white supremacist ideologue, with a penchant for total fealty to Trump and shouting at staffers to get results.
Even as voters sent a clear message about their distaste for Trump's extremism in the midterms, the promotion of Miller was seen as a sign that he intended to keep doubling down on extremism. Writing for The i Paper on Tuesday, Miles Taylor, a former first-term Trump staffer and famed whistleblower, warned that these concerns about Miller were justified and offered his firsthand experience working with him.
"People who’ve worked with Miller will tell you he’s a caricature of himself, and they’re right," Taylor wrote. "He’s famously paranoid, which is how we ended up in those secure rooms. He’s loyal to Trump in a way that borders on the religious. And he’s ideological to the bone, a true believer in a world where 'globalist' is an intentional slur and every treaty, alliance and trade deal is a scam run on the American people."
While this negative energy was easy to ignore while Miller was working as a speechwriter in the first Trump administration, now, as he sits atop the White House food chain, Taylor warned that Miller will almost certainly relish the idea that he "can wield power over his detractors." At least one former colleague reached out after the appointment, Taylor claimed, lamenting that, "I think very few people understand how extreme he is."
"For allies, that assessment is especially relevant," Taylor continued. "In my private sessions with Miller when I helped lead the Department of Homeland Security, he mocked our closest partners, berated them and schemed against them – regularly demanding that DHS find pressure points to coerce friendly governments into accepting the administration’s policy positions or complying with Trump’s demands. He was hostile to the core, and we feared his slash-and-burn attitude could result in serious national security setbacks, including with countries on whom we depend to counter-balance our adversaries. Thankfully, there was always someone to check Stephen, whether it was the Secretary of State or the Vice President."
He added further: "Some have called him an 'isolationist,' but that’s the wrong word to describe Stephen. An isolationist wants America out of the world’s entanglements and is content to leave the furniture where it stands. In my experience, Miller wants the furniture broken. What does that mean? Well, anyone who is a keen booster of international institutions — like NATO, the United Nations, the Western trade architecture, legacy intelligence-sharing relationships, or even just the bipartisan tradition of calling London or Berlin before doing something drastic — should be concerned. Miller is averse to much of it and has an almost messianic view of upending the Western world."
